


Sweet Dreams, Violent Things

by Freyjabee



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M, Gangster, NSFW, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-11-01 22:29:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20528594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freyjabee/pseuds/Freyjabee
Summary: Some girls would be mad with all of his non-confessions but Juvia doesn't think she'd love him as much if he told her he loves her as much as she loves him.





	Sweet Dreams, Violent Things

Sticky sweet summer clings to Juvia's lips. It is stiflingly hot and all the scents on the air are in disagreement. Sometimes, the wind blows and she smells flowers—sweet clover growing wily and tall in the ditch. Other times, the wind sucks in the opposite direction and she's hit with the scent of roadside death. It doesn't seem to matter _how _much distance she puts behind her, the scent lingers.

The sun makes the tarmac hazy, zagging the occasional car as it approaches. Each time one crests the faraway hill, Juvia's heart skips a beat. Then it gets close and she sees that it isn't an ugly vintage Cadillac and she goes back to trudging along, sweating, dwelling, adjusting the duffle bag on her shoulder, waiting for her escape or her capture, whichever comes first.

The side of her head feels tacky. She's afraid to touch it and find out exactly what makes it that way. She's already dizzy; blood will only worsen the feeling. She's never been particularly good with the sight of it. Funny now, when she thinks about what brought her here.

_Don't think too hard, _lest she's sick on the side of the road. She'd done a great and terrible thing.

On and on and on she walks. The sun tilts like a flower head too heavy for its stem, reaching for the horizon. Once it dips behind the hill, it will start to cool. Crickets sing and grasshoppers fling themselves from swaying grasses in anticipation of twilight. Juvia doesn't know how they have the energy. It's too hot to do anything but replay the last two hours in her mind. She is in trouble, she knows it, but it is such a distant thing, she doesn't know how to panic about it. Sometimes, she hates the way her mind works. The distance it puts up and then the mania that brings artificial closeness with people she _should _love but doesn't. It's exhausting for the people that love her and it's exhausting for her.

Wheels lock up and skid through gravel behind her. Juvia tenses, unable to believe her fate came for her _that _quickly but waiting for the impact all the same. It never comes. She turns and is inches away from a grape pop-purple bumper. He's come from the other direction for some reason. His tires leave marks on the soft shoulder.

Gray throws open his door without regard for traffic. His first words are, "Jesus, Juvia."

He sounds scared, which makes her eyes water worse than they would have if he was furious. Her legs make like they're going to give out from under her. Gray catches her arm. He takes the duffle from her and guides her to the car. People are watching them, thinking awful things, Juvia is sure, taking photos with their cell phones to post all over social. She should care because that's damning evidence but she doesn't.

The car smells like cigarettes and fabric starch. She gets in through the driver's door and slides over the bench seat to the passenger's side. Johnny Cash sings out through the tape deck. He is stuck in Folsom Prison and time keeps dragging on.

The car groans forward, merging into the sparse traffic again. Juvia tries to put her head against the window but that hurts, so she leans it back flat against the headrest. That is a little better when they aren't going over bumps.

Gray never keeps his eyes on the road for very long, looking her way with his brows furrowed. Which prompts Juvia to ask, "Is it bad?"

He reaches over and gently pushes her hair back from her temple, looking at the damage. Finally, he asks, "Do you have a headache?"

"No." Not yet, anyway. She can feel it pushing at the back of her skull, though, an assurance it is going to get worse.

"Then it's probably fine." Despite his words, he rummages through his console for a bottle of ibuprofen and hands it over. She takes three pills from the bottle and swallows them down with a warm bottle of water Gray had left in the car for too long. Then she puts the anti-inflammatories on the seat beside her and lets them rattle around as they drive.

Gray lets her sit in silence as they traverse the mountainous road. Air conditioning chugs out of the vents in laboured artic breaths—the Cadillac is some great beast, the last of its kind, on the verge of extinction. It rumbles down the road giving less than zero fucks about carbon emissions and subtlety. It scares everything it passes, humans, animals. The sun sets and the moon rises and Johnny Cash is back on the radio. This time, he's fallen into a burning ring of fire.

Juvia doesn't ask where they're going, trusting Gray completely to bring them there. He, likewise, doesn't yet ask what's happened. Maybe he knows or maybe he's afraid of the truth. Either way, Juvia is aching with the burden of it. It's heavy to carry a secret on your own, especially one weighted like lead. She doesn't regret what she's done—yet—but if he condemns her actions, she doesn't know what she'll do. It's not like they can go back. Some sins can't be forgiven.

The moon gets high. Juvia takes another three ibuprofens because once the first start to wear off, she can feel the ache between her ears like Jose had reached into her skull and wrung her brains between his knobby fingers in redemption. Then she sleeps in fits and spurts, dreaming the wretched, violent things that wretched violent girls dream about. Red doors and black walls. Messy floors and bloodied halls. Handprints and footprints and Jose's _forevers _smeared across the paint and mashed into the carpet.

Fingers skate down her cheek, much more gently than her dream. She opens her eyes to Gray's. She's looking into a frozen ocean, blues and whites and blacks in his irises. She loves them all the time but most of all when they're looking directly _through _her.

"No more dreams." His voice is ragged from disuse and his hair is messy from running his hand through it so many times. He's stressed.

Juvia flicks her eyes outside and sees that the moon is pulling the sun from its bed. They've stopped outside a cabin Juvia doesn't know but recognizes from the stories Gray's told her. It's messier than he'd let on. When he said his dad collected things when he'd been alive, he didn't mention that he also left them lying around with no rhyme or reason. She tallies trailers and tar tubs and ladders, ancient motors attached to buggies she has no name for, construction garbage. Other miscellaneous things.

Gray cups her cheek gently, bringing her back to him. "Let's go inside."

She leaves the car the way she got in. Gray helps her walk as though he's suspecting her to be dizzy. She does feel a little disoriented but thinks it's because she's tired.

Gray fishes for the cabin key on his keyring and opens the door. It creaks and wheezes like an old man. The inside smells like dusty wood and pine sap and disuse. Gray uses his cell phone flashlight to show her the way.

"No lights?" Juvia asks.

"I'll need to turn on the inverters." And he doesn't want to, his tone says. Juvia decides she doesn't mind. She doesn't want to be alone.

He leaves her in a bedroom that still has memorabilia from when he was young, movie posters, action figurines—she laughs when she sees Leonardo from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles holding vigil over a bookshelf packed with fantasy novels. The space feels empty once her laugh dissipates. Or empty _because _it was there and then gone. She can't tell which.

She sits on the bed and pulls her duffle bag closer. The fabric is crusty on one corner. She imagines if the fabric wasn't too dark to show the colour, the stain would be red. She peeks inside at all the green and can't help but wonder if it's worth it. Her head pangs then, as if to tell her she didn't have much choice in the end.

Gray is as silent as a ghost, coming to her. He takes the duffle bag and stuffs it under the double bed. "Go get cleaned up, I'll fix up everything in here."

She lets him help her to her feet and then wanders off to find the washroom. All of the furniture is covered in sheets. The cottage feels unlived in and more than a little spooky. She keeps her senses locked for threats but the only thing she hears is Gray tearing into a linen closet to get fresh sheets.

The washroom appears out of the darkness—Gray left his cell phone in there for her so she could find it.

There are wet wipes on the counter that she uses to wash dried blood off her face. There's a knot on the side of her head that would likely be the size of her fist if she didn't have so much anti-inflammatory in her. It's sensitive to touch and there is a bruise that runs from her ear across her temple all the way down her cheekbone and into her nose. She pokes it, trying to determine if anything is broken.

No, she decides. It's just an ugly bruise to remind her of what she'd done. It would fade and so would the memory.

Gray is sitting in the spot Juvia vacated when she returns. He looks up and looks pale in the glow from his cell phone. But pretty. Juvia's fingers long to be on him. They _always _do.

As though he can read her thoughts, he takes her hand and puts it on his cheek. His face is rough and his hair is soft. His skin is warm. It's still stiflingly hot. The window's open, however, and a sticky breeze limps through.

Gray kisses her wrist lightly. "How are you feeling now?"

She's never been better, here with him. "Happy."

He cuts through her with those frozen ocean eyes. "Are you?"

"Yes," she says without hesitation. Then, "Aren't you?"

He sighs heavily, making her heart drop. "I never would have asked you to do this if I thought you would have."

She's confused. "What?"

"You shouldn't have hurt him when I said to," he says as if that clarifies things, only, it doesn't really. If it was someone else, she'd say he is disappointed with her moral ambiguity but Gray is the one that taught her how to be ambiguous with right and wrong. She could be bad and still be good. She could be good but still be very, very bad.

"Jose was going to hurt us." Double cross them, for sure and take all the money she had helped acquire. She'd seen the texts on his phone.

Gray's fingers clamp down on her wrist, momentarily too hard. He lets off almost immediately, though, and the pain doesn't last. "He could have hurt _you_."

_Now _she understands. He is afraid for her. He doesn't want to be without her, Her heart flutters like a one-winged moth. Some girls would be mad with all of his non-confessions but Juvia doesn't think she'd love him as much if he _told _her he loves her as much as she loves him. "Are you mad?"

"Worried. You scare me sometimes," he says so flatly, it almost sounds insincere, but Juvia knows it's the honest to God truth. That's the way it should be because that's the way its always been. She's manic depressive, unmedicated, and he's an ice king.

"We're going to be okay. It's over now," Juvia says.

He's always thinking ahead, planning and scheming, looking for a way out. "We need to clean the money. There's a casino at the edge of town. We can hit the roulette table tomorrow and put half on black, half on red."

"Okay. Then what?"

He shakes his head. "Then we need to decide where we're going on vacation."

Juvia sinks her teeth into her lower lip to hide her smile and nods in agreement. The only thing she wants to do is go somewhere where she can swim on a sandy beach when she's melting like a popsicle.

Gray is looking through her again and silently saying all the words she doesn't want to hear him say. He stands when she reaches for him and kisses the words into her lips, too. When his tongue touches hers, she's flying high. Words are useless and words are cheap.

Juvia wraps her arms around his shoulders, feeling his sweat through his T-shirt and at the nape of his neck. His tongue brushes hers again and he slides his hands down her arms and then to her waist. His fingers tickle her hips and her back, pulling her flush against him so she can feel everything, his hard chest, the hardness growing between his legs. Her breaths are insufficient and fluttery things that Gray greedily takes up. The kiss turns into a living thing, evolving from sweet to urgent.

He pulls at her high-waisted jean shorts, seeking entry, but can't seem to work the buttons. Juvia lets him struggle. She likes it when he reaches around and grabs her ass through her shorts, squeezing in frustration when things don't go his way. He slides his fingers between her legs from behind, brushing over her most sensitive bits. Her legs quake and her breath involuntarily leaves in a meek sigh.

Gray turns her so her back is to the bed and lifts her shirt over her head. He comes back and kisses her, lips, chin, throat and chest. Between her breasts. His tongue leaves wet trails inching beneath the cups of her bra.

More than anything, Juvia wants to feel his mouth against her. She reaches behind herself and unclips her bra. Gray draws circles with his tongue around the very tip of her breast, teasing, then kissing and sucking lightly, and blowing. Juvia shivers head to foot, her headache and bruising forgotten, her criminality a distant memory.

Gray kisses lower over her belly. She undoes her buttons for him and he takes her shorts off, pulling roughly when the heat makes them stick to her skin. When she's bare, he kisses her folds closed mouth, and then with his tongue. More shivers almost cripple her.

She sits when he tells her and spreads her legs wide, inviting him inside. His tongue circles around her clit and then moves to where he can push it inside her just enough for it to be erotic but maddeningly chaste. She wants all of him inside her. She wants to be stretched and held tightly. She wants him on the verge of telling her he loves her.

His tongue moves back up to her clit and lingers there. His hands are doing something with his pants. Juvia realizes he's undoing them. A hot thrill crashes over her as he takes himself out and rubs up and down his rigid length with his subdominant hand. His dominant one is between her legs, stroking under his tongue and then entering her body.

He moves his fingers slowly at first, sliding through her wetness, and then faster, and faster until she's gasping in her breaths and crying out the proclamations he'd never say. When the orgasm takes her, her head flares for one moment, reminding her of her earlier misdeeds, and then it's all cool bliss. She's in love and her boy won't promise to love her. He isn't honest and he isn't sweet like the boys in the novels on his bookshelf. Teenage boys who'd never met the real world. Teenage boys who'd never been abandoned and crushed to near pulp.

She loves every broken fragment of him. Especially the sharp ones.

Gray kisses between her legs twice more and then he stands. He's gotten rid of his shirt at some point. His skin is smooth and interrupted by a cross he doesn't honour and too many tattoos.

He pushes his body against hers and slides inside. She's stretched like she wants, so far it almost hurts. He doesn't pause for her to get used to it, knowing that she likes this part almost the best, where she's caught between heaven and hell.

He holds her hands trapped to her sides and slams into her so hard, the bed creaks and crashes against the wall. Childhood memorabilia fall to the floor as if to say, there wasn't any such thing as innocence anyway.


End file.
